


[UNTITLED DRARRY EXPERIMENT]

by iluvzuzu



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi, PostWar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-03 15:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iluvzuzu/pseuds/iluvzuzu
Summary: Harry's post-war life is exploding; Draco's is crumbling. When they coincidentally come across one another in a deserted Muggle seaside town in early winter, something might finally be built.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I am not #drarryaf. I have never been particularly inclined to Draco/Harry at all. All the drarry I've read has come highly recommended, but I haven't been able to FEEL it. It all feels like an AU, it's all OOC all the time. It feels too easy, like they have to be different characters in order to be together. But as a queer HP fan, I felt it was my duty to try my hand at Draco/Harry to see where I am able to go with it. This is all an experiment. I would love any and all feedback!

The weather in Southaires was normally fair that time of year. Relatively temperate, though on the cool side. Occasional rains. Rarely was there snow, or frost, or wind, or sleet. This year, however, a cold front had hit the coast, and the few year-round residents prepared for a grumpier off-season than usual. They weren’t, generally, a grumpy people, and often enjoyed the winters free of tourists and holidaymakers, when the streets were wet and quiet, and the shops down the high street stood solitary and steadfast. The roofs weren’t equipped to handle a blizzard, and half the houses stood empty in November. Some of the residents wondered who would clear them if there was heavy snowfall; the answer, in each of their minds, seemed to be  _ “not me.”  _

It was odd, but not unheard of, for tourists to come in the late fall. Not families, usually, but lone visitors—writers, maybe, strange little men who hole up in their rented bungalows all day and only make appearances in town to eat alone at the cafes and counters there. The barren beaches were ideal for one inclined to that sort of melancholy mood. This year, however, the windchill on the beach was below freezing, due to the fact that the town lay directly on the coast of the sea, rather than being nestled in a cove or bay. The waters from the north were brutal. The low-lying areas near the small river flooded. The farmland became inundated, and then promptly froze over. The residents became grumpier and grumpier. 

No, this year was not a pleasant off-season for the year-round residents. But those touristing hermits, whoever they were—it seemed not to be totally unpleasant for them. 


	2. chapter one: holiday

The clock on the wall ticked at a less than steady pace. After watching it for several minutes, Harry had discerned that it was operated by, rather than gears, a miniscule man who walked horizontally along the clock face and pushed each hand himself. Unfortunately, this man was only one man, and the clock had three hands. It was probably created as a novelty. Harry checked over his shoulder; the door to Robards’ office was ajar, and he heard nothing except the scratching of the secretary’s self-writing quills, the soft hooting of an office owl that was perched above the secretary’s desk. He slid his wand out of his pocket and, with a silent wave, vanished the glass from the clock front. The little man looked up, startled, and gave Harry an excited little salute. He then began to climb his way out of the clock face and onto the wall, which he ran down until he disappeared into a small crevice between two panels. 

Harry leaned back in his chair, hearing the new silence of the now unmoving clock ring in his ears. He replaced the glass rather shoddily, and hoped it wouldn't be noticed by Robards until well after their meeting was over. The office owl hooted excitedly, and Harry heard the footsteps of the the head auror in the hall. He turned around as Robards entered the office, watched the man duck under the doorframe to allow his head room to pass. 

“These doors,” Robards said, his accent heavily steeped in South Wales. “We can pop in and out of air, eh, but we can’t build doors tall enough for us?” He shook his head, moving to take a seat behind his desk. “Glad to see you, Auror Potter.” 

“What’s this about, sir?” Harry said immediately. 

Robards regarded him with an expression that reminded him somehow of how Professor McGonnagal often looked at him now—two parts respect and one part pity. He felt himself bristling as Robards said, “Right to the punch, then. You’re a talented auror, Potter.”

He took a pause, so Harry responded, “Thank you, sir.” He never did have the skill of compulsive politeness, unlike his colleagues in government work. Anyone else might have had the instinct to take compliments. 

Robards leaned back in his chair. “I’m putting you on paid leave.”

“What?” Harry burst out, having to restrain himself from jumping to his feet. 

“Potter,” Robards explained airily, waving his hand around, “you’re a talented auror. But I’m beginning to have some concerns. You haven’t taken any of your leave. You work after hours almost every day, on weekends. Your colleagues have reported their fear of your…”

“My  _ what? _ ” Harry spat. 

Robards regarded him again. “Your burning out.” Harry sat with his mouth open, stunned. Robards continued. “Partners of yours have reported your intensity on the job, which is appreciated, but which at times strikes your colleagues as distracted and dangerous. We’re living in a time of peace, now, Potter.”

“As far as we know,” Harry muttered under his breath. 

“Yes,” Robards replied coolly. “Merlin, Potter. You came to us straight out of the war and we were ecstatic to have you, but Merlin. Take a holiday.”

“A holiday,” Harry repeated numbly. A bloody holiday. Harry had taken a bloody holiday in the late summer after the end of the war. He and Ginny had gone together to a wizarding resort in Spain where they did nothing all day but eat, drink, and sit by the water. Ginny had seemed bored, or else more interested in spending time chatting up the locals than chatting with Harry, but Harry couldn’t blame her because he’d seemed more interested in drowning himself in the warm waves. He didn’t, of course. He just floated with his ears underwater, letting the water push and pull him, feeling Ginny’s hand sometimes in his hair, hearing the indistinct timbre of her voice as she laughed and spoke Spanish and Catalan. She was excellent at living the life of luxury, but he could tell she was incredibly stifled by the inaction of it all. When they got back, she’d said, “That should do me another twenty years ‘til my next  _ vacances,  _ eh?” and she’d laughed and started the laundry. 

Robards said, “Yes, Potter. A holiday. You spent your whole life saving us all, alright? Enjoy your paid leave. Let’s have your badge.” 

Harry just stared at him. “Sir,” he began, trying to remain calm but feeling his ears and back of his neck heating. “Sir, I don’t mean to be rude,” he continued, and Robards watched him with a small, infuriating smile on his face, “but aren’t I the best you’ve got?”

“Badge, Potter,” he said jovially. “And get the hell out of my office.” Robards stood and walked to the door to hold it open for Harry. Harry, fuming, stood also, and silently pressed his auror’s identification badge onto Robards’ desk. 

On his way out of the office, he said, “And sir, I think something’s wrong with your clock.” Robards’ smug smile fell as he whipped his head around to view the opposing wall. Harry did not stop walking to see what, if anything, happened next. In fact, Harry did not stop walking until he was out of the building. At this point, he would normally Apparate home, but home wasn't exactly home these days. 

Wizarding marriages did not work the same way as Muggle marriages; they were almost as difficult to get out of as Unbreakable Vows, except they were, of course, eventually breakable—at least, in the present century they were. Harry had only looked into them in such depth because he was hoping to find a convenient way in which to leave Ginny with some money in case something happened to him. As it turned out, Ginny did not want his money, nor would she consider marriage at all. 

“I just want you to be looked after,” he’d said.

“I can look after myself,” she’d responded hotly. 

“Yes, I  _ know, _ ” he snapped. “But if I’m dead, I don’t want the money just sitting there, I want you and your family to have it.”

“Then go to the Department of Afterlife Preparation and have your bloody will filed!” she yelled. “I’m not going to be your  _ widow _ when you  _ die _ of being too  _ noble!” _

Harry and Ginny, if Harry was being honest, were at their most in love when they were fighting. The moments of peace—when she would read the sport section and rub her foot up and down his leg as he ate his breakfast, when she would comb her fingers through his hair to wake him gently if he fell asleep at his paperwork, when she would make him tea if she woke up in the middle of the night to find him also awake—were less what the love was and more an apology for what the love was. 

Or, now, what the love had been. Ginny had finally had her big break in Quidditch and was signed to the Holyhead Harpies, which meant that she had moved out of the flat to live in a new place with a few of her teammates. Or, more probably, she and Harry had had one last fight, which meant that she had moved out of the flat; her making the team only meant that she had a new place to move out to. 

Ron was abominable about it, Hermione very unsurprised. “It’s not as if the two of you were going to get married,” she’d said when Harry first told the two of them over pints. 

“Oh they weren’t, were they?” Ron grumbled. “Here I was assuming that Harry was planning on making an honest woman of her, finally—”

“Ron!” Hermione had admonished as Ron shrugged and gulped his butterbeer. “Look,” she said to Harry. “I know it’s probably very difficult, but it’s really what’s best for both of you. You’ve got so much going on with work, and now she will too. You’d never see each other.”

“Well I’m glad you’re not too broken up about it,” Harry told her, laying his head down in his arms on the tabletop. 

“Life is moving forward, Harry,” Hermione said softly, rubbing his shoulder with her hand. “We all should, too.”

“Hermione and I’ve gotten engaged,” Ron said, and Hermione shot him a sharp look. “What?” he defended. “I’m backing your point here! We’re moving forward with our lives!”

“That’s great,” Harry found himself saying warmly, feeling a genuine smile on his face for the first time in what felt like months. 

“Oh, Harry!” Hermione cried out, tearfully throwing her arms around his neck. 

“We’re not springing it on you, are we, mate?” Ron asked, a little tentatively. 

“No, that’s—” Harry spluttered, pushing Hermione’s hair out of his mouth with his tongue. “Really,” he told them both fervently when she pulled away. “I think it’s great. When’s the wedding?”

“Ages off,” Hermione insisted. 

“We want to get our careers sorted out first,” Ron added, leaning back and stretching out his arms casually, one of his fingers grazing Hermione’s shoulder gently. 

“Oh, the both of you want that, do you?” Harry said jovially, gesturing to order another round. Ron shoved his shoulder good-naturedly, and Hermione gave weepy giggles of joy as she and Ron took hands on the table. Harry was reminded of something Mrs. Weasley had said once, about how wartime made people take romantic chances they wouldn’t normally take. He was reminded of his parents, married at nineteen and dead by twenty-one. He was glad Hermione and Ron had waited. That they  _ were waiting _ . That, at least, was a sign that things were peaceful enough.

There on the pavement in front of the Ministry, he decided not to tell them about the suspension. Holiday. Whatever it was. Instead of Apparating home, or to Ron and Hermione’s, he screwed his eyes shut and felt himself shoot through air until he was standing on a beach he’d seen once in a photograph of Petunia’s. Somewhere she’d taken Dudley, once, while Harry had stayed with Mrs. Figg. Somewhere, he thought, perhaps, his mother had been taken as a girl. 

The icy wind whipped his hair around his face, stung his nose and ears, already began its work blistering his lips after mere seconds of standing in it. Squinting toward the distant horizon, he absently pulled his invisibility cloak out of his robes’ deep pocket, before vanishing underneath it, no more a man than the wind.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an experiment and I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going with this! I'm pretty sure that I'm just going to fall into the same drarry traps as everyone else because I can't write action and I don't want to! I'll do whatever I want! If drarry were real there'd have to be some actual plot instead of a romdram! But drarry isn't real bc JKR's neoliberal ass thinks there's only one Gay in wizard history! So whatever! 
> 
> As always, any and all feedback is appreciated!


	3. a failed endeavor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An explanation of why I am choosing not to continue this story.

I've decided that in order to write a Draco/Harry fic that is in-character, on-theme, and believable, the romance plot line needs to be on the back burner and the main plot line needs to be action-oriented. Character development obviously occurs in the Harry Potter series, but it's never been the main focus, and I think that's where drarry writers go wrong. They want calm, lowkey love stories, the coming together of two sides of the same shitty coin, Draco finding the good in himself and Harry acknowledging the bad in himself. But Harry Potter has never really been about that, and that's why it feels out of character. To write HP fic realistically, you need a primary plot that isn't romantic. And me, I hate plot. My playwriting professor wrote on the top of my final assignment, "not quite Chekhov, but it has a lot in common." I think what he meant by that is my writing naturally doesn't rely on plot as much as it does on characters sitting around and bitching about their lives. And that's not what Harry Potter is.

So! I'm letting go of this endeavor. My advice to all aspiring drarry writers is this: in Harry Potter, romance and peace always come second. First and foremost it is about rebellion, integrity, bravery, perseverance, friendship, and magic. Without those things, you might as well use any other characters in your work. 

I will continue to post any and all snippets I have that were intended to be a part of this story.

Thanks!


	4. IF YOURE READING THIS ITS TOO LATE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drake-o Malfoy thoughts. I think so many post-DH fics focus on Malfie clearing out his padres' house of dark artifacts because it's honestly the best thing he could do? Our boy's a piece of shit, he's not going to immediately run off and be Haz's best friend, but he could Cooperate With Lawr Enforcement, right? It's the least Wizarding Rolf Gruber could do. Anyway, here's this.

It might startle those who didn’t know Draco Malfoy very well to learn that he really did prefer warm weather. Though he had a wintery countenance and was often dressed, rather impeccably, for the cold, he had always been fond of the sunshine. His pale skin always burnt easily, of course, which caused Narcissa Black to keep him indoors during summers as a child. But he still admired it there, watched the golden rays spill down through twisted iron window panes into the dark wood-paneled manor in which he grew up. 

Through those same windows, Draco Malfoy watched the rain pour down. He indulged in rainy weather precisely because of his hatred for it; something about hating oneself and therefore placing oneself in positions which one hates felt utterly delicious. Draco now only indulged in activities that encourage the hatred of himself. Truly, it energized him. He could feel it coursing through his veins like fire, like a charging lion, like poison. Like a drug. Perhaps it was a drug; if he quit cold augurey, it would kill him immediately. And so, it followed, the drug was what now kept him alive, even as it killed him slow as life. 

He'd spent the last few years living off of his father's dwindling wealth and working as a liaison to the Ministry to locate dark objects on his property and in his family's possession. "Working," actually, was not quite the word for it. Mandated Service is what it was called. It was Wizengamot-ordered, and was to be performed indefinitely as long as Draco did not wish to go to prison. Since the flight of the dementors to the Dark Wizards, prison was different than it once was, though no less terrifying a prospect. He'd heard about this new spell the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had developed, which was essentially the Imperius curse in every way except that it was not illegal. Zabini said it was derived from a Greek root rather than a Latin one, but that it did the same thing; Goyle said it didn’t let you control a person, just let you zap them into submission; Pansy said it was French. 

Either way, it was being done on his father, presumably, and Draco wanted no part in it. So off to Mandated Service he went. Or, rather, Mandated Service came to him. He worked with a little Half-Blood witch called Louise, who arrived at Malfoy Manor every second Thursday of the month smelling of cat and ready to catalogue everything in the house. They hadn’t found anything Dark so far, mainly because Draco had turned everything in at the end of the war as a way to secure his staying out of prison in the first place. He’d shown Louise every hidden passage and panel and dungeon there was to be seen in the manor, but still, she tutted in, promptly, every second Thursday at eight. For the last four years. 

Narcissa had been living in France with her new husband, a wealthy Pureblood who claimed to belong to the magihistorical Famille La Foudre, so Draco was the only one left in the house. He’d donated the elves to Hogwarts. The peacocks had fled for want of food. The family’s horse, which had originally been a statue of a horse charmed to act as a real horse, had turned back into a statue. No servants. No plant life. Just the falling rain, and Draco. And Louise. 

“Tsk tsk, what have we here?” Louise murmured, pulling open a cabinet in the left wing attic. Draco skulked at the top of the stairs; he was mainly there to guide her, anyway. 

“That’ll be my grandfather’s belongings,” he said stiffly. 

“Abraxus Malfoy,” she replied in awe. “A terrible man.”

“Yes,” Draco felt compelled to reply. 

Louise peered at him over her spectacles, which floated magically above her pinched little nose. “You know, there are bills that that man wrote which are still technically legal to execute? Though under this new ministry no one does.”

Draco contemplated this for a moment, stone-faced. “Are there,” he asked dryly. 

Louise returned to the cabinet, wand floating over various parchments and trinkets. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You’d never find his name attached to these things, but everyone knew. He drafted so much anti-Muggleborn legislation it was nearly impossible for anyone of mixed-blood status to work for the Ministry throughout the first half of the 20th century. Not that it was simple before,” she amended, “but at least then it wasn’t technically illegal.”

Draco inclined his head. “I’m sure the new minister will change it, then.” 

“The last one didn’t, nor the one before that,” she sighed. “But yes, yes, we are in exciting new times, aren’t we?” Draco didn’t answer; he wasn’t sure he was supposed to. Exciting for Half-bloods like her meant exile for him. He knew he deserved it, make no mistake, but even so… 

He sometimes longed for the adulthood he’d imagined for himself as a child, one of galas, expensive alcohol in expensive glasses, and influence over anything he wished. He mocked himself mercilessly for these fantasies, of course, because one should never allow anyone to get away with such foolishness, particularly oneself. But, like the rain, he indulged in it, because it only made his hatred of himself more tangible, something he could bite or twist in his hands, or perhaps use to smother himself to death. That would make things simple.


End file.
